Linking Veterinary Science Faculty Research and Activities to the UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals: The Role of the Library

Abstract

There are widespread opportunities for higher education institutions to contribute to the successful implementation of the UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Consequently, sustainability is now viewed as an essential aspect of a university's reputation and prestige globally, and research applications and grants are increasingly subjected to alignment with the SDG targets of research funders. Nevertheless, while there are extensive initiatives and SDG-focused research undertaken by universities, there is still a significant gap in documenting and reporting the evidence and assessing the conformity between activities of teaching, research, community engagement, and campus operations. With academic libraries mandated to align with the core business of the higher education system, it is sensible to congruently explore opportunities to support the strategies of their parent institutions. Academic libraries hence have a responsibility to consider ways to support SDG-related research and activities of their faculties. Essentially, librarians are perfectly positioned to apply their information management skills, information organizing tools, and information communication infrastructure knowledge to facilitate the discoverability, retrieval, and promotion of evidence on SDGs. The Jotello F. Soga Library, at the University of Pretoria, serves the Veterinary Science community of South Africa. This paper will report on the initiatives undertaken by librarians at this specialised library to organise (through tags in the metadata records), communicate, and promote the UNESCO SDGs related to veterinary science. It will in particular explain how the library’s open-access platforms were utilised to report sustainability-related research and activities of the Faculty of Veterinary Science to the local and global veterinary community and society in general.